A lot of people are wondering why Nokia didn't choose to go with Android. How can Nokia differentiate themselves when Android is a lot more open and free than Windows Phone 7? As usual, the key to this is in the details. If you read the announcements carefully, you'll see that Microsoft offered Nokia something Google most likely didn't. Update: What a surprise. Elop just confirmed Nokia has a special deal with Microsoft. Whereas HTC, Samsung, and so on are not allowed to customise WP7 - Nokia is, further confirming my theory.

And what would your plan be? Have them work to get their their SINGLE Meego phone out at the end of the year? A smartphone that the CEO admits will not be as good as the original iphone? Stick with Symbian which looks dated compared to everything else? That would just mean that their platform keeps burning.

I'm also not sure why everyone expects WP7 sales to be explosive out of the gate. Android sales took a few months to build and they had the advantage of the Verizon market which really wanted the iphone but would take any knock-off. Even if they got a SINGLE MeeGo phone at the end of the year it would likely need at least six more months of refinement, if not a year. That is too much time. Better RIM and HP phones would be out by then. They have spent too much time with MeeGo and need to cut their losses for the sake of the company.

Partnering with MS is a risk but one they need to take. WP7 is a quality OS, just read the user reviews. But it lacks a software library and that is partly from not having a large userbase. Nokia can help them boost the userbase while cutting a deal that brings in more revenue than by sticking with MeeGo.

Now I think they have initially planned to continue modernizing Symbian while developing Meego for just one year to come, so it wasn't really out of schedule.
The disappointing reception of N8 (which is light years above prev. gen symbian anyway, and not a bad phone at all) and year to year market share figures have been too much for the board however.

Please note that WP7 is not a savior for them this year anyway.
Unless they are finishing their customizations now (which can't be possible given short time from their former strategy announcements and short presence of the system itself) and are ready to put some hardware to market in the coming weeks they will continue to loose marketshare in droves, additionally fueled by developer stir and uncertainty. Obviously can't just release vanilla WP phone quick, that would be branding subsidence.
Next year they'd better come up with full lineup of hw that sweeps all the competition of the floor (incl. IPhone 5) or their prospects in mobile space are quite bleak.

They may have not any meego gear in store for this year but they have nothing with WP7 either.
So the comparison of the outcome should take into account the situation in 12 months, not now:
- MS with ??? market share (struggling) and a somehow more complete WP7 + some nokia customizations that are meant to bring the WOW factor back (after 12 months the platform will have come off headlines)
- Meego with 0 market share, some loyal dev following and potentially nice UI concepts coming from their freedom to shape the platform.

If we assume they weren't competent enough to pull anything (better that WP7) off with meego next year that they, well, deserve their fate, but I simply don't want to accept that.

The wouldn't be able to create an OS as good as WP7 in 2 years and I'm sure that was factored into their decision. Try WP7 out for yourself, I'm still shocked that it is a MS 1.0 release.

MeeGo has the Qt dev advantage but the .NET community is larger.

But more importantly MeeGo has been in development for years and still isn't ready. Like I said before I'm sure it would take another year after release to get the bugs out and they don't have that kind of time. They also wouldn't have much to offer consumers since to them it would look like Android but without the software library.

They had to partner with another platform and using Android just feeds the beast. Partnering with MS gives them a chance at breaking up the market to prevent a duopoly and makes it easier to enter later with their own OS. It's a better strategy than creating a second rate Android. MS can also be leveraged, Google probably laughed at the idea of helping Nokia.

Meego was (well, now the second) dumbest mistake Nokia ever made. It added nothing generally to Maemo, except alot of rework for no value. May argue about the feasibility of Hildon/GTK but it's a strawman argument and irrelevant now anyway.

Weeks lost switching from debian to rpm, build server upgrades for months all to integrate with an existing netbook distribution. Utter waste of time, effort, and more importantly momentum. The n900 adaptation effort for meego couldn't even launch today for existing hardware let alone new platforms.

Should have completed Harmattan and announced the dual-core N9 in December when they planned and added Qt/QtMobility in staged releases along with Symbian^3.

Not difficult. Someone deserves to be fired, but becoming a Microsoft OEM is the end of Nokia. It will continue obviously in a decade-long slide. Then it's over. And even if it survives it is no longer the Nokia we have known and supported as a EU technology counterbalance to the US.

The market agrees, their stock price is down what 15% on their new strategic announcement? And Elop is worried about Nokia's credit rating? Going to be an interesting annual stockholders meeting to be certain. Some board members should be worried.